


Now It’s More Than A Wish, It’s A Dream

by ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Episode: S2 E8 Boneless, Family Dynamics, Gen, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:59:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23904244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe/pseuds/ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe
Summary: As Ragnar lays his family down to rest he thinks about all the good fairness has ever done any of them...and he dreams
Relationships: Ivar & Ragnar Lothbrok, Ragnar Lothbrok & Sons of Ragnar Lothbrok
Kudos: 7





	Now It’s More Than A Wish, It’s A Dream

Ragnar was in just as much awe as Aslaug when he saw that blue-eyed baby, eyes so much like his in a way Ragnar couldn't quite understand yet.

He felt wonder...wonder at how even after the sixth child it feels no less intense, the love that fizzles to the top of his chest. The surety that nips at his every nerve ending that he would protect this small defenseless thing with every damning breath he held and even the breath he didn’t yet have.

When he saw that head of blond hair and blue eyes, features so familiar to him at this point; Ragnar was hit once more with this overwhelming feeling of love. Overtaken with just how much he could love someone, want the best for them, want suffering to never get its ugly claws on them.

yet he still saw what he-   
What Boneless was.

He knew that Ivar could never live the life he deserved, Never live the life Ragnar wanted so badly for him, Would truly beg the gods for...to no avail all the same.

he-  
Boneless-  
Ivar-

Didn’t deserve the pain that was to come from a life like that. That is if he was even strong enough to make it through the night, Through the week, through the month, through the year.

Ragnar can see it; See himself laying in bed watching as his son's chest rose and fell. Begging for it to keep its rhythm, for his heart To stay buoyant in his chest.

Worrying over his son's heart every night.  
Equally begging for it to keep its beat and expecting one night for it to just stop. Worrying his nights away.

Part of Ragnar wants that, would take that over having to do what he thinks he has to. He wants to worry himself to an early death to find every worry void.

The other part knows no one deserves that.   
Not Asluag, thinking Ivar a baby she can keep,  
nor Ragnar having his son taking over his every thought and least of all Ivar.

To think that Ragnar isn’t Just as much in love- 

Wanted him just as much-

If want, alone, could keep Ivar alive and well  
Ragnar’s youngest would never die; of this he is sure.

Oh If want was enough he would have never lost his little girl who forever lives in dark skies and damp sand.

But it isn’t enough.  
It matters not how much Ragnar wishes-  
nor how fair or unfair it is. He can’t.

It only matters that there is only one right choice to be made and it is anything but fair, it is anything but what Ragnar wants.

In that moment Ragnar closes his eyes and lets all the future lives he’d seen the moment he looked into those little blue eyes

die.

All the years he saw of them together,  
All the years he saw of his son well past Ragnar’s own time.

He let the name "Ivar" die on his tongue with a whimper of pain, no man-made word could ever express.

“Ivar” went with a fiery rage, Crawled up his throat with the vengeance of a dead man, spun around his tongue with the spite of a life never lived and finally went with the feeling of a moment lost, of happiness never found again.

“Ivar” left his mouth heavy with the weight of grave dirt.  
But it did leave.....no matter how painful and exhausting and heavy, ...it did leave.

So much so that the baby he held in his arms was no longer his own flesh and blood but rather a poor soul whose heart hadn’t quite caught up with itself, and once it does the soul will go back from whence it came. So Ragnar can go on to never hear the name Ivar again without a bitter taste in his mouth. 

And maybe if he thinks about it like a faraway memory he can still hold some fondness for the name "Boneless."

That thought lights a fire under Ragnar’s fury, not directed at the lost soul that lay in his arms, not even in its collective defenseless of its own unbecoming; but in the sheer unfairness of it all.

No matter how much Ragnar beats that horse it never feels anymore dead so until it gives him any sense of satisfaction he keeps beating it.

It’s not fair.  
It’s not fair.  
It’s not fair.

In the wails and pleas of his wife, that is all he will allow himself to hear. Not the meager retorts she gives but what truly lies beneath them.

'It’s not fair. It’s not fair  
It’s not fair, he was mine to keep.  
You can’t just take him.'

It wasn’t fair the howl that erupted from a baby much too small for such a keen sound; But maybe that was just Ragnar’s own consciousness that made it ring like that. None of it loud enough to drown out the feeling of complete and utter injustice.

As Ragnar lays his family down to rest he thinks about all the good fairness has ever done any of them.

In his dreams he sits on the sand and for the first time in a long time he wonders what his daughter would think of him. 

Not for the first time, he is glad he doesn’t know.


End file.
